It all sounds very familiar. Expected guests are only minutes away and the reception area, the dining room and the bathroom are still in a mess. All signs of devastation have to disappear somewhere in the fastest possible way. Such an emergency necessitates an urgent solution and the box room and other side rooms lend themselves perfectly well as temporary hiding places for all sorts of objects. The guests could now get the impression that all is well and orderly.

A quick look at our state coffers in Malta could suggest business as usual since our state entities serve as the side rooms where we hide our debts. In opening our main doors for EU membership and the adoption of the Euro, we first shuffled our dirty debts into the balance sheets of the state entities.

All looked well for a while but in times of crisis those debts stacked in the side rooms come to haunt a fledging economy. Instead of using money to invest in the future of the country, one is confronted with an ever increasing burden in paying interest rates on the accumulated debts.

One could fool guests for a long time but as the Greek tragedy is showing, an indebted state cannot fool forever. The truth will rise up as flotsam for the Maltese people as well. The hidden debts in our state run entities are turning foul, beyond the control of our accounting shenanigans. One by one those hidden secrets will seep out.

The first step in solving a problem is defining it properly. But this won’t happen in a timely fashion if our leaders persist in telling us that the problem doesn’t exist.

Agnes Debono

Kercem